


Launch

by sparkly_butthole



Series: Losers Bingo [2]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Also Temporary, Butterfly Effect, Canon-Typical Violence, Denial of Feelings, Getting Together, Groundhog Day kind of in there too somehow, Happy Ending, M/M, Major Character Injury, Temporary Character Death, Trauma, Weird Beauty and the Beast Vibes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:08:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkly_butthole/pseuds/sparkly_butthole
Summary: Jake’s a smart guy and a science geek besides. He gets a huge nerd boner when the experts talk about black holes and alternate universes. Grade-A stuff right there.But this? This sure as shit wasn’t supposed to be possible in any universe.
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen
Series: Losers Bingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1509350
Comments: 27
Kudos: 52
Collections: Losers Bingo 2019/20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my entry for the denial of feelings bingo prompt. The idea actually came from a dream I had a while back. As soon as I woke up, I knew I had to write it. 
> 
> Special thanks to my FANTASTIC beta ASheepsLife for helping me with this thing. Any issues in the fic are because I didn't listen to her. 
> 
> CW for this chapter: Brief thoughts of self-harm, cartel-style torture in first section. It’s ugly, just letting you know now.

  
  


Jensen jerks awake with a start. The dark is so still and thorough he can’t see what’s in front of his face, and probably couldn’t even if he had his glasses on. Taking stock, all he can say for sure is that he’s in a way-too-comfortable bed having a panic attack from a dream he doesn’t much remember, and that he’s in a fucking  _ world _ of hurt. 

Jensen’s body feels strange; something is terribly wrong, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Attempting to move doesn’t work, which only manages to ramp up his anxiety tenfold. He focuses on what he’s learned: take a deep breath, and then starting with your toes, systematically contract and relax every muscle group. He can still remember the lady’s voice, calm and controlled, and honestly that just makes it even worse, realizing he’d been trained by someone who’s obviously never been in this position before. No one could possibly be calm right now. 

Or maybe that’s just because the first muscle group he attempts to move isn’t fucking  _ working _ .

He tells himself that it’s just the aftereffects of his dream, like the world’s worst sleep paralysis. That’s all it is. He’ll start to feel his legs any minute now, then he’ll get up and jump around and maybe take a long jog around the compound. Help get his mind away from the bad juju.

But the problem – the  _ problem _ here – is that his legs aren’t moving. And it’s goddamn paranoid, and he’s probably wrong, but now he needs to see for himself, so he blindly reaches for his glasses and the bedside lamp common to all Army barracks with the assumption he’s even on a base. His eyes are wide open, the light is blinding as his eyes adjust, he’s awake as he’s ever going to be, but  _ his legs are not moving _ .

Then there’s an almost-there itch and a thin line of fire across his lower thigh, and shit shit  _ shit _ he has a bad feeling about this. The terror’s there and the panic is rising, and he’s so fucking afraid to look down or even feel, because while his mind doesn’t know, it also  _ knows _ .

Something is terribly fucking awry here, and whatever it is, whatever devil or evil spirit is responsible, Jensen’s been singled the fuck out.

He takes a deep breath, holds it to a slow count of four, then breathes it out, another count of four. It’s not fucking helping. He has to face this thing, because that itch is getting worse and the pain feels awfully specific like he’s been stretched and torn in all the  _ rightwronggodawful _ places –

Jensen looks down and sees it, what he’d already known if only he’d let himself - or rather, he sees the lack. No little piggies to go to the market to buy their own family members or go whee all the way to the fucking oven. No calves, no knees. Just bandages where his thighs end.

A quarter of him, gone. Ash. Dust. Atoms.

Eyes wide and wild, he feels for confirmation, fingers searching desperately for flesh that simply doesn’t exist any longer. He forces himself up, tightening his abs until he’s sitting up, and yes – by sight, by feel, there’s nothing there. The bandages are real. The pain is real. The phantom itch is real.

Jensen fucking  _ loses his shit. _

He screams and screams, loud like he’s being murdered, like his life depends on it. Even when Cougar bursts in the door, face white with alarm, he can’t stop, can’t ask for help or an explanation. He can’t even fucking breathe.

Cougar races out of the room and comes back in an impressive five seconds with a paper bag for Jensen to breathe into, but by then his vision is greying at the edges and he’s seconds away from passing out. Cougar desperately tries to hand him the bag, to help him get it under control, but whatever Cougar sees in his eyes makes him take a hard step back.

Jensen doesn’t want to get it under control.

Jensen wants to die.

***

  
  


It comes to him in fits and starts, subconscious forcing him to remember in his drug-hazed hallucinations what he so desperately wants to forget. 

They’d thoroughly cased the place, home base of some former Honduran general, an upstart prick with delusions of taking over the government and installing his buddies in positions of power. The same corrupt bullshit over and over again, and Jensen has been getting tired of it. He’s damn near getting as cynical as Cougar. It could be worse - there’s still a ways to go before he considers himself Roque-level cynical, but that’s a line he doesn’t even want to see in the distance, let alone cross.

Regardless, it had seemed like an open and shut case. Break in, get the shipping manifests, report, meet up with the other team, and sabotage the route, letting the bad guys know in the process that they’d been made and would have to start over. Nothing they hadn’t done before. Intel and recon had matched up perfectly. The general would be - was  _ supposed _ to have been - on the other side of the continent, meeting up with new weapons suppliers. 

Because the general was paranoid as shit - for good reason, it’d turned out - he’d kept original documents in a digitally-locked safe. Good thing for the Losers, Jensen had brought all his neat little gadgets and given them to the others, so he could perform as a spotter for Cougar when necessary and do his part of the work while the others snatched the data. 

He’d gotten them in, Clay and Pooch with Roque on their six, gotten all the doors unlocked and security systems offline with barely any need for violence on his teammates’ part, when it had happened. The clusterfuck of the century, and all because of a misprinted map. Who even fucking  _ uses  _ printed maps these days? 

He and Cougar had been quietly celebrating their success and waiting on the others to exit the building when the general himself, along with four other men, had just randomly fucking stumbled into their nest. Literally - they’d nearly fallen straight over Jensen. Training had taken over quickly, of course, but two against five was bound to be a tough fight, and with he and Cougar on the ground like they were, they’d been disarmed in a few blinks with nothing more to show for it than a through-and-through in the general’s SIC. Jensen’s work, go him. 

SERE had taught them both well. The Hondurans had asked all kinds of questions ranging from  _ how many of you are there _ to  _ what are you here for _ , and all Cougar had had to say were angry insults in Spanish that even Jensen hadn’t learned, which was a bummer since he’d considered himself a connoisseur of both foreign insults and Cougar alike. For his part, Jensen had talked their ears off - about anything but what they’d wanted. He’d known it would draw their ire, but better him than Cougar, always.

It’d been a gamble that had always worked in the past, because they’re a damn good team and the cavalry had always arrived, but this time, they’d been too late. The general’s SIC had gotten pissed and shot off part of Jensen’s foot; he remembers laughing hysterically about how sad it was that the little piggies could never go to market again and how very rude that was. Of course, that’d only pissed his torturer off more, which led to him losing his other five piggies, this time to a knife. 

Jensen had babbled the whole time, voice loud enough to reach his discarded earpiece, a genius move on his part that had allowed the others to get an idea of what was going on before crashing the party. As much as Jensen could remember, anyway; ‘agonizing’ would be an understatement, and he’d been pretty far gone on endorphins. 

In the end, Clay, Pooch, and Roque had made it just in time to see the SIC pull Jensen’s left knee off at the joint, the other having been recently disposed of, dismantling him like a machine instead of an actual three-dimensional sentient being. There’s not much Jensen remembers surrounding that particularly grisly event, even in his more lucid moments, even as the story comes together in his mind; what stands out the most is how white Cougar’s face had been when Jensen had met his eyes, and the way Cougar’s scratchy growth had felt against his fingers when he’d reached out to palm his cheek. He’d tried to say  _ I’ll be okay, promise _ , but he isn’t sure if that had made it out of his mouth before he’d passed out. 

  
  


***

  
  


It’s day five after Jensen’s first wake-up-and-freak-out session. He’s staring listlessly at his computer, barely registering the flashing green cursor. He’d begged them to involve him in planning the next stage of the op; Clay had reluctantly given him the okay, with the understanding that once they’re brought back stateside, he’s out. But it turns out that major trauma takes more than a handful of days to recover from, at least in terms of going back to work - who could’ve predicted that - and his heart just isn’t in it. 

Cougar wordlessly takes the PC from him and replaces it with a warm cup of tea. He has to settle Jensen’s slack hands around it to keep it from spilling all over the bedding. Jensen still doesn’t look up. 

By day eight, he’s gotten the hang of maneuvering himself into and out of his chair using his remaining limbs, but he still doesn’t leave his bedroom very often. Today’s a bit better, keeping in mind that better is an extremely relative descriptor, and he’s on the verge of wheeling himself into the hall when he hears hushed voices coming from the living room around the corner. 

“We’re keeping an eye out.” Clay. 

“How’s that helping? Guy’s just been mutilated, and you think we’re equipped to handle this? What, he’s just gonna lay there in bed and rot?”

“Roque,” Clay sighs; Jensen can envision him in a slow facepalm, “this is the most secure location we’ve got until we get the all-clear. Then yes, he goes to a facility for rehab. Mental and physical. What else do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know, Clay,” Roque says sarcastically, “how about not leaving him alone to sulk for twenty-three hours of the day!”

“Cougar’s caring for him.”

“And he’s practically become as nonverbal as Cougar himself!”

“And?” 

Roque’s breathing so hard, he’s got to be absolutely seething. Jensen’s honestly a little touched he cares enough to get this worked up. “That’s not healthy,” he hisses. 

“Cougar does his job just fine, doesn’t he?”

“The sniper doesn’t need to talk, Clay. The comms guy just  _ might _ .” After a few moments of silence, a chair groans under his weight and he says, defeated, “Guess it doesn’t matter. We’re gonna need a new tech. Jensen’s done in the service.”

_ Holy fuck, _ Jensen thinks. The shock of that declaration freezes him in place. It hadn’t yet occurred to him what would happen beyond here. The remainder of the mission had been postponed; they need Cougar on board, and Cougar had outright refused to leave Jake until he’d seen him safe at home. Somehow, the brass had gone along with that, much to Jensen’s confusion. But somehow he’d never pictured himself anywhere but with his team. Never… home. Wherever that even was. 

God, he can’t even help. He can’t do his job  _ at all _ . Will he ever be able to live alone again? Will he need a caregiver for the rest of his life?

Mind spiraling, Jensen forces himself to listen to the remainder of the conversation. 

“... know they’ve always been weird, Clay.” 

“You tellin’ me you don’t think Cougs is professional enough to keep doing his job?” 

“Nah, man. He’ll do it, sure. But his heart won’t be in it. Not if Jay’s gone. And I for one don’t want a sniper if he’s not in the game. This is our lives on the line here.”

“Cougar’s got two years left on his contract. You know that.”

“Transfer him.”

“Roque - “

“ _ Transfer him _ . I’m not gonna be a casualty because two grown men can’t bond like normal adults. They’re like… like lobsters or something.”

“Lobsters,” Clay repeats doubtfully. 

“Mate for life just once.”

“Is this a joke?”

“Do I look like I’m jokin’ to you? No.”

“They haven’t mated. I wouldn’t have missed that.”

“They might as well have!”

“Roque,” Clay bites, clearly at the end of his limited patience, “leave it alone. Let’s deal with one thing at a time. Extraction’s in three days. We’ll get Jensen home. Then we regroup.”

“I ain’t workin’ with him, Clay. You know I’m right.”

Clay’s silent for about thirty seconds; Jensen knows with a sinking feeling that Clay agrees and is trying to hedge for the moment. “I’ll talk to the brass. We’ll figure something out.”

Jensen hadn’t thought that he could spiral worse than before, but hey lookie, here he is. Not only is his career ruined, so is Cougar’s. His best friend will be assigned to another unit, people who don’t know him or understand his weird silences. They’re not called the Losers for nothing; even though they’re the best at their jobs, no one else can work with them like they work with each other. And everyone in this business knows that a loosely knit team won’t survive very long. 

Clay and Roque find him leaning over the toilet throwing up what little he’d eaten today. Clay waits him out, standing vigil, then offers to take him back to his room. Jensen, forehead resting on the toilet seat, breath coming in wretched gasps and snot hanging from his nostrils like particularly stubborn lichen, refuses the help. His commanding officer grumbles about stubborn techies, but leaves him be. 

Cougar, who’d been at the pharmacy picking up more pain meds, finds him there an hour later. 

_ “Dios _ ,” he hisses, dropping the prescription bottle like a bad habit, “why did they leave you here like this?”

Jensen sighs at the feeling of Cougar’s hands on his back, allowing himself the luxury of enjoying it for once. Just… just once, and only for a minute, before he shakes Cougar’s hands off. 

“‘M fine. Stop being a mother hen.”

Cougar snorts before running his hand up Jensen’s back and into his hair, massaging his neck at the hairline, and Christ, that is not fair. He jerks his head up and twists - fuck, why did he do that, does he  _ want _ to throw up again? - and glares sideways at Cougar. “Said I’m fine.”

Cougar’s face under the hat is impassive, but his hand never leaves Jake’s hair. He feels like he’s losing it, giving in like this, letting Cougar take over and take care of him; he’s not going to be able to keep his feelings trapped inside that damn lockbox in his heart. Fucking hell, he already feels like crying all the goddamn time. 

“Cougs,” he finally says, and at least that embarrassing little break in his voice gets Cougar to stop. But when his best friend pulls away, his heart aches at least as badly as anything else has this past wretched week.

“Clean up,” Cougar says, getting up to draw Jensen a bath. They’d gotten him a handicap room on base, used by soldiers such as himself who had been injured in the line of fire. The bath is spacious enough to fit the two of them, though Cougar usually helps him in and out and otherwise leaves him alone. 

“I don’t need - “

“Jake,” Cougar says, and his tone makes Jensen look up. From this angle, he can see the grim twist to Cougar’s lips and his dark, fathomless eyes underneath the brim of his hat. “I’m just trying to help.”

This is so fucking unfair. He wants to growl, to throw something, to punch Cougar’s stupid, beautiful, concerned face, to break down into the tears that have threatened throughout the last week. But he’s too fucking  _ tired  _ for any of it. 

“I know,” he mutters. “Go ahead.”

Cougar pauses, looking like he wants to say something -  _ that’d be fucking new _ \- but decides not to; within a couple minutes, he’s picking Jake up and placing him carefully in the big tub. When he starts to stand and leave Jake to his own devices, though, Jake reaches a hand out to stop him. 

“Don’t. Just.” 

And Cougar, the man who’s seen Jensen at his best and his worst and everything in-between, doesn’t need a translation. He quickly undresses and steps in behind Jake, who scoots forward to make room. It’s a little cramped, but neither of them complain. Feeling Cougar’s muscled arms wrapped around him, hearing his slow, steady heartbeat, and basking in the scent of him… he needs it all, needs it to just let go, and when the tears flow violent down his face, Jensen doesn’t try to stop them.

  
  
  
  


***

  
  


It takes two weeks for Jensen to get home, even though the op had been cancelled shortly after his second breakdown. The brass had gotten the intel and had started planning a new op with a new team. Unfortunately, they’d requested Cougar and Clay. Fortunately, Cougar had told them to stuff it and had taken temporary leave, which he’d probably gotten away with because they haven’t had a stand-down in about a billion years and he’s good and well earned it.

Of course, Clay hadn’t had a choice in the matter. As soon as he’d gotten in the door, he’d found out that he’d be leaving with the new team in ten days. 

Another week after that had seen Jensen into rehab. Since the Army actually gives a shit about Spec Ops soldiers - well, ex-soldiers in his case - he’d gotten hold of some prototype extensions that allowed him to walk, though it was more like a shuffle-stumble-whiteboy-dance thing than actual walking.

Clay visits him the night before he takes off. Jensen’s sitting against the headboard, laptop on… what’s left of his lap. He looks at Clay quizzically when Clay sits on the edge of his bed. 

“Uh. You’re reminding me uncomfortably of my dad right now.” 

“Yeah? Well, it’s not like I haven’t been in charge of you for three years.”

Jensen considers that. “Point. But you’ve been a lot nicer about it. If you can believe that, considering you’re a damn stick in the mud most of the time.”

“Jesus, I didn’t teach you to respect authority very well, did I?” He grins for a moment, before a thoughtful look crosses his face. Jensen’s not used to seeing that particular expression on Clay. It kinda gives him the heebie-jeebies. “Parents not treat you well, I take it?” 

Clay must be wallowing in pity to dig into Jensen’s past like that, but Jensen feels compelled to answer anyway. “Not that. They were just… I dunno, wrapped up in their own shit. Too busy afraid they’d lose each other to realize they were losing each other. We were caught in the middle. Baggage.”

Clay looks at his hands, rubs the edge of one rough thumb against the other. “Life is a beautiful thing sometimes. And other times, I look at you, at people who didn’t even walk away like you did, and I ask myself if it’s really worth it. To be honest, Jensen?” He meets Jake’s eyes, naked honesty and something like grief on his face. “I’m not sure it is.”

“Huh. I’ll have to tell my grandkids about this someday. ‘So there I was, talkin’ to your uncle Clay, your  _ stoic  _ uncle Clay, the one who  _ hates fun _ , who tells me this thing that makes me think he’s either suicidal or feeling unusually philosophical.’ Let me tell you, sir, if you’re still around, ain’t a damn person gonna believe that. Maybe not even me.”

“I’ll cut to the chase, then - “

“About goddamn time,” Jensen interrupts, muttering. “I’ve got a whole lot of nothing to stare at right now.”

“ - since you’re going to be an ass about it. I don’t know how long this op is gonna last, but I’m under Wade’s command.”

“That’s… less than ideal,” Jensen says slowly. 

“I wholeheartedly agree. But since two members of my team are down, and Roque’s particular skills would be redundant, I’m the odd man out.”

Jensen sighs and looks away, off to another dimension, sees the bits and pieces he remembers - the hysterical laughter at his own juvenile jokes, the sharp knife sawing across his skin and down, to, and through those tiny bones that had seemed monolithic at the time. The surreal feeling of watching your own leg pulled away from your body, severed tendons hanging free, blood sluggishly trickling onto the grass. 

“Guess I am, too, now.”

“Jensen - “

“Come back safe, okay?” Jensen doesn’t look at Clay, just keeps his gaze off in the distance, but he means it. If anything, he means it too much.

“I always do, don’t I?” Clay walks out of Jensen’s room without looking back. 

  
  


***

  
  


Cougar’s taught Jensen a thing or two about meditation. Jensen really isn’t great at it, but he tries, he really does, so it counts as far as he’s concerned. Cougar is always unimpressed, but that might just be his face. Jensen may feel… however he feels about Cougar, but the guy has resting bitch face down to a science. Sometimes it’s legitimately hard to tell. 

Other times, Jensen can read him like a book. He tries not to examine why that makes him feel so proud. 

Today, Cougar’s in their shared suite - really a studio apartment on the rehab center grounds - with the lights out and a few candles in the center of the room. When Jensen stumbles in from the hall, he’s tired from his day of PT and nearly faceplants in the unexpected darkness. 

When he steadies himself against the kitchen counter, which is (thank fuck) right inside the door, he glances over to see Cougar watching him. His hat’s askew and he looks strangely enchanting in the candlelight. A dark magician wearing a cowboy hat. Cougar is sitting cross-legged in the center of the candles like he’s legitimately practicing Witchcraft. 

Jensen wants to glare at him for turning the lights out for the cripple to trip over in the darkness, but he can’t bring himself to do anything but stare at that beloved face that makes him feel like there’s a cavern inside him that only Cougar can fill. His heart pounds and his breath speeds up and - no, it’s just the stumble and the surprise. Not the man’s smile. Not his hair that smells so much like rain on a spring day. Damn Cougar. 

He limps over and flails in his attempt to settle down beside Cougar - outside the weird summoning circle, because who fucking knows if Cougs really is a magician. The guy might be; Jensen has watched him in the field, and his best friend is at least boss-level badass. 

“I see you’re enjoying your sabbatical. What kind of creature are you summoning now? Got an actual cougar under that hat of yours?”

Cougar drops his eyes and shrugs, a non-answer. He starts stretching, spreading his toes wide and wiggling, the very thing Jensen had first attempted to do when he’d awoken to this hell. Jake watches each individual muscle group flex under Cougar’s tightly-held control - his calves bulge almost comically, then his knees flex and extend in a butterfly stretch. 

Jensen watches the exercise absentmindedly while his mind snowballs. What is Cougar doing here? Why isn’t he finishing this, helping to eradicate the bastards that did this to Jensen? He’d told Jake, in one of those rare moments of raw emotion - back when Jake had needed to be carried to the toilet, this was - he’d said how satisfying it would feel to torture these bastards right back. His voice had been murder then, and it had caught Jake off-balance. Cougar’s intense and dangerous, but he’s not cruel. Jensen wouldn’t feel… well, they wouldn’t be as close as they are if that were the case.

Does Cougar know about what Clay and Roque had talked about at the base? Is Cougar going to get reassigned, and if so, is he aware? Is this goodbye for them, one last hurrah before Cougs leaves the Losers and all their history behind?

The questions spiral out of control until Jake’s head hurts. To avert the incoming headache, he does what he does best: talks. 

“Did you know that some sea cucumbers have evolved teeth in their anus… anuses? Anusi? Anyway, teeth. Yeah. To stop predators from like, hitching a ride. That’s fucking weird, isn’t it? Hitching a ride in someone’s asshole?”

Cougar stops mid neck stretch to glance at him quizzically, but Jensen just rides right over the unspoken question.

“I think they also detach inner organs and expel them through said anus to creep out the other sea creatures. Which I will admit is a brilliant idea. I wouldn’t mind learning that skill, you know? Provided I could reform organs like they do. I mean otherwise it would suck to just, like, lose your kidney through your ass.”

“Jensen - “

“I found out something else interesting, from a very unexpected source, but it turned out to be untrue. Which is kind of a bummer. Apparently we’re lobsters, but they don’t mate for life, so I don’t know what that says about us…” 

“Jake,” Cougar says, and he’s suddenly aware that Cougar is in his space, Cougar’s hand is around his bicep, body outside of his weird summoning circle. “You can always ask.”

Jensen groans and throws his head back. “But I do ask, and then you give me that look like  _ oh no, I have to have a talk about feelings _ , or whatever. Or real human interaction. But if anyone can do that, it’s us, right? Talk about stuff like that? Aren’t we… “ He gives up on words and gestures between them, clearly frustrated. 

“What? Lobsters?” Cougar looks amused again. 

“Oh god,” Jensen says faintly, staring at the callused hand that’s still grasping his bicep. “I didn’t say that, did I?”

“I have no idea what you were talking about. If that helps.”

“Fucking thank god and hell yes, it helps.” 

“Okay.”

“Okay.” Jensen tries to keep his mouth shut, he really does, but after one beat, two, three - his mouth just spills his secrets of its own accord. “Okay, why are you here though?” 

Cougar’s eyebrows climb his forehead but he doesn’t respond.

“Because look, you’re not my actual nursemaid here - “

“I know.”

“ - and you’re supposed to be, y’know, working, or whatever, like we’re seriously in the Army, or I mean,  _ you _ are - “

“Jake.”

The hand on his bicep squeezes, but along with Jensen’s sense of feeling in his calves and toes went his ability to stop running his mouth. What little ability he’d ever had. “ - and I just don’t get why you’d want to spend time with me. A cripple. My life is over, man. You need to move on.”

Cougar’s quiet now, contemplative. Jensen has nothing more to add now. He feels the buzz of the silence, the itch underneath his skin, his instincts telling him to  _ get out, run, you’ve shown too much _ , but he can’t exactly get up and walk away now, can he? At least not without making a total ass of himself. 

“I am meditating,” Cougar finally tells him. “Would you like to join me?”

“Um. You know I’m not very good at it. I wouldn’t want to, y’know, uh... “ He gestures at the intimate setup. “Ruin your… buzz. Or whatever.”

“Ambiance.”

“Right. Ambiance.”

“You won’t.”

Jensen bites his lower lip. “If you’re sure? I mean, I could use some centering. My emotions are all over the place.”

“I’m aware,” Cougar says.

“Shut up. Just because cats hide behind dark, brooding eyes doesn’t mean I know how to do that.”

“You want to change the world, don’t you?” Cougar asks him. And it’s not like Jensen really believes that’s possible, but maybe just daydreaming about a different life would be nice for a little while. Get out of these old bones. The ones he has left.

“For you, Cougs? Anything.” 

Cougar talks him through it, not just breathing deeply or relaxing all of his muscles - those things he knows how to do - but letting go of everything. Against all odds, Jensen quickly finds himself floating, the traffic outside and the yelling from down the hall fading into a low, numb background. 

“Find someplace safe,” Cougar tells him. “A house or a field or a mountain. Look out the window, down the mountain, away from your safe place. Now picture a bad memory or a bad outcome. Outside where it can’t hurt you. Picture the future you don’t want.”

In some corner of his mind, Jensen’s not sure that he’s supposed to be visualizing the bad stuff, but he’s mostly gone into the ether and isn’t about to question the meditation master anyway. Instead, he finds himself in his aunt’s home, what used to be his favorite place as a child, looking out the back window into the yard next door. He can smell the lavender on the windowsill, the cool fall breeze blowing back the curtains, leaving a chill in his bones. He shades his eyes from the sun that’s shining right into his eyes until he realizes that this isn’t reality and he can do whatever he wants. So there, now he has Cougar’s hat. Perfect. 

In the yard next door, he watches a house grow from scratch, his own childhood home. There are his parents in the living room; Jensen can’t see what they’re saying to each other, but it’s not pleasant. In the background, hiding behind the stairway is the little version of Jensen himself, biting his nails and watching them fight with wide eyes. 

His father, obviously riled up, reaches out for the rose-colored ceramic vase they’d gotten as a gift from Jensen’s grandmother before she passed, pink and gold filigree sparkling in the twilight. Jensen watches the smaller version of himself wince and close his eyes like he had in real life. 

Cougar’s quiet now, but Jake can clearly hear him inside his mind. Funny how he talks more during meditation than normal conversation.  _ Make it better. Make it happy. Change it, if only for a little while. _ So Jensen does, reaches out with his mind just as Mr. Jensen grabs hold of the vase and  _ pulls _ as hard as he can. The vase lands just beside him by his aunt’s back door. He stares at it, transfixed, before remembering the scene in the next yard, where his mom and dad are so freaked out about the vase disappearing they’d stopped fighting. 

_ Well, that’s one way to do it _ , he thinks, surprised to feel a deep sense of satisfaction.

He drifts for a while, mostly just hanging out in his aunt’s house, working on building Legos or reading science fiction novels. He’s ten, but he’s also twenty-five, and it feels odd, but also pleasant. There’s no reason to get stuck on overanalyzing anything here. Things just  _ are _ . 

Awareness slowly seeps in again. He’d been sitting next to Cougar in the center of the summoning circle - screw what Cougar says, that’s what it is - but now he’s lying down, back to the floor and body between two of the candles. He flashes awake when he realizes how close they are.

“Holy shit!” he yells, attempting to jump up before remembering he doesn’t have legs. Instead, he ends up sprawled on Cougar’s lap in the center. 

Cougar, who’s silently laughing at him. Asshole.

“Why’d you let me do that? I could’ve caught fire! It’s not like I can just run to the bathroom and jump in the shower!” 

Cougar’s shaking now, breath coming in little bursts as waves of amusement hit him. Jensen’s miffed, but the laughter is infectious, and he can’t hold onto his annoyance for long. 

“You’re a dick,” he gripes. “You helped me?”

“Of course. I always watch over you.” 

Jensen’s extricated himself from Cougar’s grasp and has moved to a respectable distance away, but the words make him yearn to be back in Cougar’s space. Between all this - his protectiveness, keeping an eye out for him, _telling the federal fucking government to take a hike,_ however he’d managed that one \- Jensen’s not sure what it means. Or if it means anything. 

He opens his mouth to ask, but before he can, Cougar leans over and puts his hand against it, effectively shutting off whatever embarrassing babble was about to come out of Jensen’s mouth. 

“Go to sleep, Jake. You did well tonight.” 

Jensen feels himself turn absolutely beet red at the praise, feeling his pelvic muscles tighten and his cock jump. Well, there’s a kink he didn’t know he had. “Thanks, Cougs,” he says, hating how small and shy his voice sounds. “For everything.”

“ _ De nada _ .”

“Um. Could you help me up? It’s been a long day, and I don’t know if I can get up on my own again.”

Cougar does, but just like his physio, he doesn’t let Jake hang on him like a barnacle, making him do most of the work. Jensen’s breathing heavy by the time he makes it to bed, and for once, he doesn’t mind how ridiculously soft it is. 

Cougar climbs into his own bed, so close to Jensen’s there’s only room for one person to walk between. Jensen falls asleep before he can blink, Cougar’s presence a comfort he’s going to miss terribly when he returns to the field. 

  
  
  


***

  
  


_ “Tio Cougar! Tio Cougar!” _

Jake watches with delighted indignation as Beth bowls into Cougar, forcing him to let go of some of their heavy luggage in order to catch the little creature. Jess puts her arm around him with a snort. She kisses his cheek and then leans her head on his shoulder. He’s proud that she still sees him as strong enough to lean on. 

“Guess I’m chopped liver, huh?” he says loudly to get his niece’s attention.

“Aww, Jake! Mom says I have to be careful because you got hurt!”

“So it’s transferred affection, then? Dump it all on Cougs and he’ll share it with me?” 

She nods solemnly, arms still around Cougar’s neck and hair damp against her cheek from a recent shower.

Jess cuffs him on the back of the head. “Don’t worry, she’ll be climbing all over you again as soon as she knows you’re not a fragile little flower.”

“She’d better, or she won’t be my favorite niece anymore.”

“I’m your  _ only _ niece,” Beth says with an audible eye roll. 

“Alright, kid, get off your uncle Cougar and show him the new guest room,” Jess tells her, shooing her, and by extension, Cougar, in the right direction.

“This is a nice place,” Jake tells her as he limps up the driveway. “I’m glad you could afford the down payment.”

Jess has an arm on his shoulder to steady him, but otherwise she trusts him to make it on his own, bless the woman. “Well, Mr. Nice Guy learned how not nice his ex-wife could be. Thanks for the lawyer. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“That’s what brothers are here for.” 

“Really?” she asks with a raised eyebrow. “Here I thought they were to cause trouble. Maybe if I’d known that, I would’ve given Bethy here a little brother.”

Jensen scoffs. “Not by that jackass.”

“I hadn’t even slept with him in the last three years, so no chance of that happening.”

Jensen’s mouth twists into a wry smile as he navigates the porch steps. “I’m somehow both proud of you and disgusted that you told me at the same time.”

“Shut up and get in the kitchen. Beth wants to cook you her favorite meal tonight.”

“Mac and cheese?”

“Mac and cheese,” Jess confirms. “She’s adding jalapenos and bacon for you and Cougar, though.”

“I bet my ass is going to be on fire later tonight,” Jake mutters, and almost loses his footing as Jess slaps the back of his head again. 

“Paid me back for the TMI remark pretty quick, I see.”

“Can’t even apologize for nearly reinjuring the cripple?” Jake grumbles good-naturedly. 

“I can coddle you or I can treat you like a soldier, but I can’t do both. You just let me know. Now sit your ass down.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” he says, and settles in at the kitchen table. 

Beth, it turns out, is a damn good cook for a five-year-old. Jensen discovers that he loves to watch her and Jess work together in the kitchen. She’s such a smart girl, has so much potential, especially now that her father is out of the picture. Maybe he can act as a mentor for her, come help Jess out. The C.I.A. is negotiating a private sector contract for him, but he can do that remotely, and surely he can work with some robotics experts down in Boston for his legs. Maybe there is a life after the service for him, after all. One month on, he’s finally starting to feel hopeful. 

Now if only he didn’t have to lose Cougar. 

Cougar sits next to Beth at the table. She seems quite smitten with him. The last time they’d been up to New Hampshire, she’d only been four, so she might not even really remember her honorary uncle. It’s like getting to know someone all over again, some childhood version of Fifty First Dates. Jake wishes he could meet Cougar over and over again, though that might be weird. Meeting him, dark-eyed, haunted, and shy, had been much dicier than this; Cougar has come a long way in the two years Jake’s known him. But the journey had been as fun as the destination. Watching Cougar unfurl and spread his wings, become more comfortable in his own skin… not much in his life has been more satisfying.

Beth talks their ears off for the entire meal, about anything and everything, shoving her phone at both Jake and Cougar to show… the yard full of dandelions, a lizard sunning on a rock, and her friend Randy down at the bowling alley. She’s ready to start kindergarten in a few months, and oh boy, is she ready. 

“She is a born Jensen,” Cougar tells him with a snicker once Jess has taken her up to bed. He gestures at Jake to stay seated while he takes care of the dishes. Jake gives him an irritated look but lets him do the work. If it makes him feel better, Jake is willing to let Cougar get away with it; he’s gotten the feeling recently that his best friend is carrying way too much guilt at having to leave soon. And Jake can’t hide all of his fear and resentment about it, either.

“Hell yeah, she is. Already smarter than most adults I know.”

“Including me?” Cougar asks with a smirk.

“Unfair question, friend. You are a freak of nature. No boss-level creature has a low IQ, it doesn’t work that way.”

Jess smoothly intercepts Cougar’s trajectory and takes over kitchen duties. “And not all high-IQ creatures are boss-level, either. Don’t go growin’ my kid up too fast, hear me?”

“What, you mean you _ don’t  _ want her helping her uncle hack into the government’s secrets? That’s just rude.”

“Will you take him to the living room like the geriatric fart he is?” Jess asks Cougar, completely ignoring him. Cougar nods and grabs his arm. 

Jensen lets himself be led down the hall to the living room. He’d only seen pictures of the place from before they’d moved in. It’s impressively large, with two bay windows in the corners, both of which have little pillows and comforters stashed for a cozy afternoon reading (or hacking) session. The walls are painted cream except for the door side, which is a muted red. The shelf above the television is full of trinkets Jess had picked up throughout the years - their grandmother’s hickory jewelry box, Jensen’s boot camp graduation photos, the weird art she’d bought on her honeymoon. It’s a gorgeous set-up, and he looks forward to spending more time here. 

But there’s a problem. A big one. A panic attack-inducing sized problem just up there, staring him in the face, rose-gold and ancient, long ago turned to meaningless shards. 

That fucking  _ vase _ . 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Temporary character death(s), descriptions of violence (though not as bad as chapter one.)

  
  
  


Jake is totally not freaking out. Totally. Not. 

Except that he is. He _ absolutely _ fucking is. 

He doesn’t like to toot his own horn. He’s not that kind of guy. But the fact is, Jake has an eidetic memory. He remembers both situations very clearly - the vase breaking, and the vase not breaking. Schrodinger’s vase, except that one of those things came first, uncalled for, unbidden. One of those things happened in reality, not just in his mind. 

He’s managed to fool his sister into thinking he’s fine,  _ just a little under the weather, but we should get going soon. It’s been a long few weeks. You understand _ . Cougar, though… Cougar knows him better than anyone else in the world, and normally, Jake wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s not that easy when those keen sniper eyes are on him, though, trying to take him apart piece by piece. 

He tries not to think about how much he’d like it if Cougar could put him back together again, too. He’s only moderately successful.

It’s awful leaving his sister and niece in such a state; they deserve better from him than half-hearted attempts at a conversation that he’s barely paying attention to. At the end of the visit, though, Jake is just happy that Jess can’t tell anything is off other than what could be expected after what he’s been through. Anything beyond that is too much for him right now.

But Jensen is absolutely  _ not fucking freaking out, _ okay?

“I’m freaking out,” he says as soon as Cougar gets the car started. “I’m so freaking out.”

Cougar gives him an unimpressed look before hitting the gas, his way of saying  _ no shit, Sherlock, I have eyes. _

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I get it. You  _ don’t _ , though, Cougs.” Jensen gestures wildly, encompassing exactly everything and nothing. 

Cougar sighs, an audio facepalm. “Can’t read your mind.”

“I dunno if that’s even true. I don’t know if  _ anything’s _ true right now. I mean, I’m betting more than I’ve ever realized is true, but.  _ Fuck _ .”

His best friend keeps his eyes on the road, but Jensen can tell it’s only his unusual ability to focus that allows him to. Cougar has the patience of a saint when it comes to him, but that little twitch of his eye here and there tells Jensen he’s dying to know what this is all about.

“Okay. You want the story, right? Do you promise not to put me in the looney bin?”

“Haven’t so far,” Cougar points out dryly. 

“I mean, that’s a good point, but it’s also, like, not the whole story. Okay. You have an eye for things.” Never has Jake been so thankful for that fact. “You saw the vase on the shelf in the living room, right? Red and gold? Ceramic? Seems like it’d be a waste if it got destroyed?”

“Yes,” Cougar states.

“It  _ was _ destroyed. A long time ago. Or it was until we meditated the other day.”

A beat while Cougar thinks about it, then: “I’m lost.”

“So am I,  _ mon frere. _ You told me to make a memory better, or look to a better future, right? Well, I did that. And the memory I used was when my dad crashed that vase against the wall. I remember. I r _ emember _ . Cougs, I’m telling you the truth. You believe me, don’t you?”

“I… believe that you believe it,” Cougar says haltingly. 

Jake groans and puts his head in his hands. “Looney bin. I’m headed to the looney bin.”

“So talk me through it.”

Jake does. It’s not a complicated story. Scenario A: nine-year-old Jake, grandma’s vase destroyed, parents argued until mom left. Same old shit. Scenario B: twenty-five-year-old Jake watching nine-year-old Jake watching the argument before pulling the vase to his happy place, parents ending their argument in confusion.

“They shouldn’t have stopped, right? Like if it was just a vision, they wouldn’t have reacted. That part doesn’t make sense. It should have just pulled the vase out and the memory would have played out like it happened.” He turns to Cougar and looks at him imploringly. “Has nothing like this ever happened to you?”

Cougar glances at him sideways, hesitant and guarded. “I… No. Nothing like that.”

“Well what do you think of? When you meditate like that. Maybe we can follow it backwards somehow.”

“I’d rather not say.”

“C’mon, Cougs - “

“I’d rather not say,” Cougar says sharply, before his voice softens and he gives Jake a little apologetic shrug. “Old pain. New pain. It’s not you.”

It’s not enough of an explanation, and it hurts to know that Cougar doesn’t trust him deeply enough, but Jake concedes the point anyway. Besides, is it fair to expect him to share everything? Jake doesn’t. Christ, it’s not like they’re married.

The rest of the car ride is spent in relative silence. Jensen tries to improve the mood, but conversation fizzles out quickly. Cougar doesn’t believe Jake, but Jake can tell he’s still uneasy. He wonders if Cougar is holding something relevant back. Thing about Cougar is, if he doesn’t want anyone to know his secrets, nobody will know his secrets. That old adage about only one person being able to keep a secret doesn’t work if Cougs is the second person; Cougar would never betray someone’s trust simply because he doesn’t even betray his own. 

At home, or what Jake will have to get used to as home, he discovers yet another shitty aspect of having no legs: he can’t perform his normal post-adrenaline neuroticisms. No pacing back and forth, running his mouth. Well, the running his mouth part is always there - Jesus, what would happen if he couldn’t even talk anymore? That’s a shudder-worthy thought right there. It’s just not the same without the pacing, though. The fact that this apartment has more room to pace than his bunk had ever had just adds insult to injury. 

God bless Cougar’s grizzled heart, though; he brings Jensen paper and pen, tea, coffee, his laptop, his Rubik’s cube, and anything else Jake asks for while he talks his way through the panic. Cougar can’t even relate, doesn’t even really believe Jake on this one, but he’s still there helping as best he can. 

Jake fucking loves him so much it hurts. Best not to delve too deeply into the how, though; after all, best friends who have saved each other’s literal asses so many times are bound to be that close, right? 

_ Right, _ Jake thinks, sighing inwardly. 

Jensen’s sitting at the kitchen table and staring blankly at his laptop an hour later when Cougar settles across from him with an actual goddamn  _ newspaper _ . He looks up incredulously. “Wait. What?”

Cougar raises an eyebrow and sips from his steaming tea mug. 

“No, you’re like, reading a newspaper. Haven’t I taught you better than that? Jesus fucking… you have a smartphone, Cougs. You have the entire internet.”

“I see your freakout is done,” Cougar points out.

“Only in that I have an entirely different thing to freak out about now. What the hell?”

“You need to sleep soon.”

“It’s seven thirty.” 

“Don’t care,” Cougar says like it’s a done deal. 

“No way, nuh-uh, you’re not the boss of me.”

Cougar drops his hat on the table and runs his fingers absent-mindedly over his scalp. Jensen has to look away at the unintentionally pornographic show. “I am for the next eight and a half weeks.”

“What is this new bullshit?” Jensen asks, the incredulous note in his voice growing. It’s been a long fucking… three weeks now. Four? Time has lost all meaning. 

“I am on FMLA,” Cougar states matter-of-factly, like this is a perfectly vanilla thing for a spec ops agent to say.

It’s only through Army-trained reflexes that Jensen manages to save the tea he’s been sipping, though it does get on one of his nicest t-shirts. “Can’t you wait to drop bombshells like that until after I’ve set my shit down? Christ.” Then the rest of Jensen catches up with his mind. “Wait. Wait. You’re on  _ what _ now?”

“FMLA,” Cougar says slowly, like Jake’s hearing is the thing in question here. “I am on FMLA to help you.”

“FMLA,” Jensen mutters. “What is my life?”

Cougar shrugs. There’s so much meaning in one little movement, it’s amazing.  _ Just go with it. Unless you don’t want me here, then say the word. _

And no, Jensen isn’t going to look this gift horse in the mouth. Not for all the money in the world.

“But  _ why _ ,” he whines. “You’ll just get bored.”

Cougar slowly stands up and stalks over to his side of the table and lifts Jake’s chin, forcing him to make eye contact. “We’ve lived in each other’s back pockets for years. How is this different?”

“Uh-huh. Okay,” Jake says in a daze, drowning in the scent and the nearness of earth-rain-shampoo- _ Cougar _ . “But don’t do it if you feel guilty. Please. Not for my sake. I mean, I know I’m a mess, and today definitely didn’t help, but - ”

Cougar breaks eye contact and lets go of Jake. “No guilt. No pity. Think of it like a domestic partnership.” 

“Right. Well then… partner… how the hell did you even get them to go with that, anyway?” It’s not like they can legally be a domestic partnership, after all - Cougar must have made some wild shit up about a close family member to pull that one off.

“Clay.”

“Clay can’t work a fucking desktop, and you expect me to believe that?”

A raised eyebrow is all he gets in return.

“Yeah, okay, not focusing on the right things here. Sure. Just… settle in, I guess.”

Cougar does, and it makes Jensen yearn for things he cannot have. And no, he does not have feelings for his best friend, not one iota, just a minor crush… but the thought of Cougar as his  _ domestic fucking partner, _ Cougar maybe coming back when his last two years are done, Cougar sleeping in a bed just across the room in  _ their own house _ is not going to make it easier to convince himself. Not anymore.

  
  


***

  
  


The call comes a few days later. 

Cougar answers the phone. It’s midday, an absurd time of day to receive such a call. The sun is shining bright, making Cougar’s red and Jensen’s white replanted roses pop in the garden out front, it’s in the upper seventies and climbing, though not too quickly, and Clay’s dead. Jensen sees it on Cougar’s face before he hears the news. 

Jensen tends to be the emotional one, always wearing his heart on his sleeve, easy to cry (or easier than the others, at least), quick to anger and just as quick to forgive. Cougar puts on the hard-ass look, but it’s mostly because he plays everything close to the vest. A defense mechanism, maybe borne of fear of showing too much. But once he’s hung up the phone, all the spirit seems to drain out of him, leaving him seem like a hollow shell. It’s frankly quite terrifying.

Jake follows him out to the balcony, wobbly like a newborn calf but walking well on his new feet, as well as can be expected. He curses his damn luck, because if Cougar wanted to disappear, he’d do it, and there’d be nothing Jake could do to stop him, the way he has in the past when Cougar’s had an emotional shock. No high-speed cat chases, not for him. Not anymore.

But Cougar stays out there, a shadow in brightness, a beacon Jensen would follow to the ends of the earth. He’s got a can of beer held loosely over the edge; the other hand grips the fence until his knuckles are white. Once Jensen’s eyes adjust to the light, he sees that Cougar’s face is still mostly blank, but his eyes are  _ desolate _ . 

Jake lines up next to him. He isn’t sure what to do here - this goes beyond anything they’ve handled before, despite all the shit they’ve seen and done. After all, Cougar has now lost two members of his team in one month’s span, in one way or another. Jake listens to his Cougar-sense and waits him out.

“I wish I could stay with you,” Cougar says under his breath. “Life would be so much simpler.”

Jake takes a moment to process this information. Cougar  _ would _ want to stay with him? As in, not in the Army, just as Jake and Cougar? Or maybe he’d go by Carlos. Maybe he’d reveal all kinds of things he’s kept hidden from the others over the years. What he’s like day to day when he doesn’t have to worry about being hypervigilant. What position he’d sleep in if he could fully fall asleep, nightmare-free and trusting his environment. Jake’s never let himself think about that before. Seems dangerous, considering. 

“Well,” he responds slowly, “You have two years left. At this point, you’ve got so many accolades, they wouldn’t deny you a desk job here.”

“I won’t shirk my duty. I am the best at what I do. And most of the time I  _ believe _ in what I do.”

“Duh. You don’t need to tell me that.” Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to hear, but he doesn’t say that out loud. Cougar’s sense of duty goes far beyond anything Jake’s ever known. He simply wouldn’t understand; therefore, there’s no reason to discuss it. “Just find another team. A better one. A safer one, maybe.”

“Safer?” Cougar scoffs. “Do you know what our jobs are?”

“Cougar, look at me.” Cougar turns his head so reluctantly, Jake’s afraid he might have to force the issue, but by Mary Palm and her Five Fingers, he’s got something to say, and now is the best time to say it. Maybe the only time. “Do what you have to do and then come home.” He very carefully doesn’t say _ back to me _ , but it’s implied. Heavily. And why wouldn’t it be? Nobody wants to lose their best friend.

That’s all Cougar is. Really. A friend.

_ Is that why you’re so gung-ho to see him stay? Is that why this is killing you inside, knowing he might not live to come back to you? Because if so, you’re delusional, Jacob Jensen. _

Jake closes his eyes and shakes his head even though Cougar is watching him. That voice is supposed to stay locked deep in his subconscious, in the Marianas Trench of his mind. 

Cougar turns back toward the street. God, Jake’s never seen him look so broken before. Is this how it goes now? They fall one by one, to literal death or dismemberment? They fail at their jobs or take one wrong step and - that’s it? The Losers become the lost? 

Jensen is suddenly so terrified the same thing will happen to Cougar, so absolutely certain everything that matters to him is going to disappear, he has another panic attack. His heart speeds up, a solid lump of rock deep in his chest breaking his ribs into tiny pieces that pierce his heart, and he stops breathing. Cougar’s there by his side once again, always taking care of him. Always. Maybe one day he’ll be able to do the same for Cougar. 

Fat chance of that now, though.

“Breathe. Jake, breathe.” 

Through the haze of his panic, Jensen feels Cougar’s breath and heartbeat underneath his palm, Cougar telling him with slow, soothing words to follow, focus on his heart and his breath and just let Cougar take over. He suspects he’s going to go through the same things a lot of military men do when their time in the service is over, that this is just the beginning. 

It takes a lot longer for the world to stop swimming than Jensen would like. He finds himself lying down, the wooden slats of the porch digging into his back, the sun blinding his oversensitive eyes, Cougar leaning over him, still holding Jake’s hand to his chest. 

“What happened?” Cougar asks. His face is still, serene, like he’s holding his own fear and sadness inside in order to help Jake. It’s weak and Jake hates himself for it, but he knows Cougar as well as Cougar does him. For whatever crazy reason, Cougar enjoys watching over him. It’s a fight Jake’s had with himself time and time again, and this is no time for that, either. Jensen is starting to suspect that he’ll need to cherish every second he has with his remaining teammates, even Roque. 

“I just realized… Cougar, we’re falling over like, like, I don’t know, we’re  _ crumbling _ . Little rocks falling into the ocean. Soon there’ll be nothing left of us. Nothing left of… “  _ Us _ . Wisely, Jensen’s mouth stops before it can run away with him. 

But honestly, does he really think Cougar doesn’t know? He’s _ not _ new. Seriously.

“I know,” Cougar says softly, and for yet another split second of panic, Jensen wonders if he’d said that out loud. “It’s what we signed up for.”

“We were young and stupid.”

“Everyone is at one point.”

“Clay doesn’t have any family. Only us.”

“Only us,” Cougar agrees. “So we send him off right.”

  
  
  


***

  
  


The next morning finds Jensen surprisingly well-rested and in good spirits, relatively speaking. He hobbles about the kitchen making breakfast. Cougar tries to take over at one point, but Jensen shoos him out of the way. He’s going to have to learn how to do it all by himself soon, anyway. 

“Any word on when the funeral is?” he asks as Cougar sets coffee on the pot. 

“Next Tuesday. Need time for the body to ship.”

“There was… enough?” Jensen hadn’t needed to hear how Clay had died. He’s relieved to know it wasn’t an IED. Or worse. “That’s good. It’ll be good to see his face one last time.”

“Sure.” 

Jensen’s humming to himself and making pancakes when he feels eyes on the back of his neck. The hyperfocus of sniper’s eyes. He turns to find Cougar giving him a speculative look. 

“What? I got something on my neck?”

“You’re going to be fine,” Cougar murmurs,  _ apropos _ of nothing. 

“I… What?”

“You’re going to be fine,” he repeats. “Your life will work out how you want it to. I just know.”

“Uh. Okay? Thanks, I guess,” Jensen says, absentmindedly rubbing his head in confusion. It seems maybe Cougar’s turned into a fortune cookie dispenser or something. He turns around and keeps working on the pancakes; they’ve never been his best meal. Maybe he’ll add some pumpkin spice next time. “The hell did that come from?” he asks after half a minute.

Cougar makes a noise of confusion, making Jake turn back around. “I… don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I feel weird.”

“Well, you  _ are _ weird, so there’s that,” Jake tries to joke. Honestly, it’s true, but also, Cougar’s freaking him out a little bit. 

“We should try meditating later,” Cougar suggests, face still a mask of concern. “You’re doing better than I am today, though,” he adds grudgingly. 

“Well, I feel weird all the time, so I’m used to… dammit!” The pancake he’s been trying to perfect lets out a stream of smoke - not enough non-stick spray, which means yet another batch will be slightly burnt and bereft of proper pancake floppiness. “Let’s just eat and try not to think too much. We’ll try meditating later.”

Cougar doesn’t say anything, but that’s not weird, so Jensen lets it go.

  
  


***

  
  


Jensen watches as Cougar sets up the ritual circle again. The new apartment’s wooden floor gives the whole thing an even more official vibe. Jensen feels like he should go back to when he’d fancied himself Wiccan for approximately two months to continue studying. Of course, there’s nothing to that kind of thing; Jensen is into the rational and doesn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or magic, but he feels a tingle in his bones nevertheless. When he asks Cougar about it, Cougar shrugs and says the setup’s not necessary - he meditates in the field, too, sometimes in what are essentially foxholes - but it does help him get into the right frame of mind. 

Jensen figures it’s more for his own benefit, honestly. Cougar can laser-focus on a fly in the next state in half a second when he wants to.

They sit across from each other, knee to knee, which means Jensen is just sitting with his newly formed legs straight in front of him and Cougar has his crossed. It’s easy to get a head start on concentration because of this; Jensen is finding it more difficult than expected just to keep his balance while sitting on the floor. Halfway into that challenge, he’s found his mind is going blank like before. 

Cougar doesn’t talk as much this time. His breaths become part of the experience for Jake, just as they had when he’d panicked yesterday. He feels so in tune with Cougar right now that they must be one person - for a while, he’s convinced that they  _ are _ one person. There’s a wave overtaking him, a wave of substance, of awareness, of something undefinable that even Jensen doesn’t have words for. A feeling. Magic, maybe, if he was the kind of guy to believe in that.

Jake opens his eyes, and - 

He’s there with Cougar.  _ There _ , about an hour before the General and his men had crossed paths with them. One look at Cougar’s face and Jensen knows Cougar is also here, the  _ real _ Cougar, the one in the living room and on the battlefield and in all the spaces between. 

Adrenaline grips Jake then. The need to fight, the need to flee, the need to protect himself and what’s his. HIs legs, his body, his team. Cougar. More than anything,  _ Cougar _ . 

“What, uh… “ He clears his throat, tries to force his heart rate back down to what it had been a few moments ago, to force it back down his fucking throat. This is a vision, it _ is;  _ Cougar can’t really be here like he’s sharing space in Jake’s mind, but it feels so fucking  _ real. _ His skin is prickly with sweat, the bugs make little  _ skreet skreet _ noises in his ears, and it smells like the damn jungle farted into a paper bag and left it there to rot. Jensen remembers this like it was a second ago, because it  _ was _ a second ago.

“ _ Shh _ ,” Cougar responds under his breath. “Come with me.”

Jensen doesn’t argue, just follows Cougar down the path. He’s insanely terrified of running into the General’s men again - why, he doesn’t know, it doesn’t make sense, because his legs are gone, he’s been tortured and paid the price, it’s a  _ done fucking deal _ \- so he’s just focused on the rise and fall of Cougar’s feet, the slight curve of his back as they stumble through the trees.

Jake remembers the place where Cougar finally stops, the staging area for the op, a clearing on a hill about a mile southeast of the big concrete compound. They’d been here, what, four hours before? Four weeks and change? Pooch had saluted them before running off on his own; Clay had patted Jensen on the back and nodded at Cougar, his version of a pep talk. 

“What are we doing here?” Jensen whispers, although there’s no need to. Probably.

“Getting away from that place.”

“Regrouping in a… what, a vision? What is this? And before you try to argue, I know it’s you.  _ You _ , you as in on the wooden floor of my civilian housing.”

Cougar stares at him flatly. “I said to change it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but we weren’t supposed to end up here together. Have I lost my mind? Again? Oh… Oh, shit. What if this is real? Like the vase? Oh my  _ god _ … “

Cougar scans the surrounding area, for what, Jake’s not sure. Maybe words. Eventually, he says, “Why not try anyway?”

Jake stares at him incredulously. “Because, I don’t know, reality is breaking down around my ears? Not in an apocalyptic way, more like a  _ whoops-I-broke-physics _ kind of way. You think I shouldn’t be freaking out, or what?”

“Can you do anything about it?”

“Go back home?”

“Do you want to?”

For once, Jake’s the one without the words. He doesn’t, but this is also _ freaking him the fuck out,  _ which seems to be an unfortunately common scene in his life these days. Cougar shouldn’t be here with him. Well, he should, but not like this. This should be  _ his  _ mind, sacrosanct, untouchable. Shit, can Cougar read his mind? Does Cougar know what he’s thinking right this instant?

He looks deeply into Cougar’s eyes, tries to read his mind, and comes up blank. Cougar is just looking at him expectantly, waiting for his mouth to vomit whatever bullshit he comes up with next, so Jensen’s thinking it doesn’t work that way, either. 

The relief is palpable. 

“Okay. Okay. So what do we do?”

Cougar shrugs. “Fix it.”

“Just the two of us?” He guesses he deserves the look Cougar gives him. “Right. The other three guys we work with. You’re right.” Jensen pulls out his comm unit and presses the button. “Command, this is Alpha. Do you read me? Over.”

A pause, then the crackling of Clay’s unit coming to life. “Command to Alpha. We read you. Is there a problem? Over.”

That’s a good fucking question, isn’t it? Because the answer is that there is a problem, but Franklin Clay sure as shit wouldn’t believe it, maybe not even if Cougar and Jensen could furnish proof. 

“Well, sir, we’d like to… take a step back. Maybe rethink some things? Over.” He winces and looks to Cougar for help. 

“Alpha, is there a problem? We’re almost in position. Security will be patrolling this area for the next forty minutes, and we’ll need to go dark soon. Over.”

“Right, yeah. Something’s off. Just… fall back. Over.” He can hear how  _ off  _ his voice sounds, the lack of  _ joie de vivre _ the others are used to. Maybe that’s exactly what’s needed here to convince them. Jensen can only hope. 

There’s silence on the other end. Jensen’s tense, can feel his back muscles tight along his spine. If Clay and Roque don’t listen, he and Cougar are going to have to think on their feet, because it’s not like they’d had time to plan an alternate operation. And if things do work out, the Colonel is going to have questions. Jensen isn’t quite sure how he’ll answer them. 

Or maybe the point is moot, because they’ll come to in their own bodies in the living room and none of this will have happened. 

“Roger that,” Clay finally says, and Jensen can feel ten years of weight fall from his shoulders. “Alpha, Beta, be at the rendezvous point in… fifteen. Over.”

Cougar looks the same as he always does, calm and collected, mission-focused, but Jake’s next concern is quick on the heels of success.

“It’s gonna be an Alpha Charlie for me if I don’t figure out what the fuck I’m gonna say,” he groans. “Help me out here, Cougar.”

“You could say you caught minor disturbances. Nothing big, but enough to concern you.”

Jensen falls back in line behind Cougar, following the trail down the other side of the hill, away from the compound. It’s kind of giving Jensen the heebie-jeebies, having his back to it, like it’s awake and aware and looking for him. Sauron’s eye in the Honduran jungle. “Yeah, but then he’s gonna want details.” 

Cougar’s quiet as they continue the climb. The jungle is less dense, which should make Jensen feel better, but he still feels trapped, knowing those assholes are out here somewhere. He’s unusually graceless, stumbling over downed limbs and tripping over vines. Cougar glances back at him a few times, but doesn’t ask questions. It wouldn’t surprise Jake if his best friend was also a little freaked to find himself in this situation. Cougar’s pretty unflappable, but maybe that’s just because he pours excess nervous energy into greater focus. It’s a goddamn superpower. 

They make it to the rendezvous point in less than five minutes. 

“Pooch isn’t here,” Jensen says, eyes slitted against the sunlight as though that would magically make him appear. “Why isn’t Pooch here?” He’s got a bad goddamn feeling about this. “Beta, this is Alpha requesting assistance. Do you copy? Over.”

Silence.

“Beta, this is Alpha. Do you read me? Over,” Jensen repeats, hating the way his voice sounds so helpless.

“Copy,” Clay responds. “Alpha team, relay. Over.”

“No sign of Beta. How far out are you? Over.”

“Less than five. Hail’s a liability at this point. Switch to radio silence. See you in five. Over.”

“Acknowledged.” Jensen thumbs the switch on his unit. “Fuck!” he spits, roughly fingering his hair and getting his fingers caught on tangles in the process. “Cougs, somethin’ ain’t right.”

Cougar doesn’t answer; he’s gone to that dark place where only official communication can reach now, the place that makes him the best sniper in the world as well as the scariest motherfucker. His eyes are glassy, pupils dilated. Cougar Mach One, Jensen calls it. Mission objective locked. 

The sick sound of a dying motor reaches his ears after a few seconds or an eternity. Clay and Roque round the bend in their ride, a dingy, dusty old Ford that’s made it its mission to single-handedly destroy the environment. At the same time, Jensen’s radio crackles to life, but no sound is forthcoming. None of them are holding their units, and none of them have buds like Jensen does. 

The world goes still for a few terrified breaths, the way it does immediately after the whine of a missile and before the explosion. Jensen has no idea what’s coming, but it’s nothing good. His gut’s been telling him that for nearly half an hour. 

In another world, another universe, Jensen is a few scant minutes from being tortured. Here, he fears something much worse has happened. 

There’s a rattled breath on the other end of the line, followed by a cough, then: “Beta acknowledges radio contact. Permission to speak freely assumed here: Shit’s bad. Real bad.” Pooch coughs until he can’t breathe, and then coughs some more. 

“Get in,” Roque yells from the window as they pull up. Cougar and Jake hop in the back of the truck. Clay barely slows down for them. 

“We know where we’re headed?” Jensen asks through the comm.

“I’ve got an idea,” Clay says grimly. “Beta, do you copy?”

“Roger,” Pooch grits out, pain lacing his words. “Two klicks northwest of the meeting point. Ditched the vehicle. I’m in a rusty old pipe off the north side of the road. Can you find me?”

“Roger that,” Clay responds. “We’ve got you, Sergeant. Hang tight.” They get no acknowledgement from their teammate. 

Jensen shares a look with Cougar. Pooch sounds so goddamn weak. Jensen feels like he’s going to be ill. 

“Can you keep talking to us, Beta?” he requests. “I promise no one is gonna hack this channel. Just keep us informed. What the hell happened?”

“Ain’t no one left to hack it. Killed the - “ Pooch coughs loud into the mike. “Fucking bastards. Four. Four fucking guys.”

A sick feeling finds its way into Jake’s gut. “The General?”

A few seconds pass, some of the longest in Jensen’s life: “None other.”

Jensen closes his eyes and prays to a God he doesn’t believe in that this vision will end, that it’s not real, that he imagined the vase and Cougar’s presence in this nightmare and his legs and his apartment and all the rest of it. 

“Guys,” Pooch mutters. “I ain’t gonna make it out of this.” 

“No, don’t talk like that,” Jensen says desperately. “You’re gonna be fine. We’re minutes away from your location - actually, I see the pipe up ahead.” Off comms, he shouts at Clay to hurry up. “Just hang in there.”

Nothing else from the comm unit, not a single crackle. By now, Jensen can see Pooch’s body, slumped against the inside of a large pipe near the treeline. He jumps out of the truck the instant Clay slams on the brakes, nearly launching him over the side. 

Pooch’s tac vest is wet with blood from a wound Jensen can’t see at first glance. It’s trickling out of his mouth and nose, too; he reminds Jensen uncomfortably of a toddler who has thrown a tantrum and cried himself to sleep, only he’s covered in blood instead of snot. He looks so goddamn young like that, eyes open to the sky, an expression of peace on his face. 

Jensen doesn’t bother feeling for a pulse. 

He turns around and makes his way back to the truck, past Roque and Clay who are yelling something at him, though he can’t make out the words. He ignores them and climbs in the back with Cougar, who is slowly getting to his feet. 

Cougar steps forward and hugs Jake tightly. His body heat is fire in the still jungle air, but Jensen clings to him desperately, shivering like he’s the one bleeding out. 

“What do we do?” Jensen whispers against the top of Cougar’s head. The earthy, musky scent of his best friend is all that’s holding him together now. “Cougs, we’ve gotta go back.”

“I don’t know how,” Cougar admits. 

Jake pulls back far enough to look Cougar in the eye. There’s a grimace on the sniper’s face that clearly communicates how dead serious he is. “What do you mean? Don’t we just… I dunno, snap our fingers? Click our heels together three times? Surely you can swim out of a trance.” He’s embarrassed to note the rising desperation in his voice. 

“This has never happened to me before.”

“Well what the fuck, then? Was I imagining everything else and this is reality? But this can’t be reality, because you’re here with me, and you were with me before, and we both know what’s going on, which means you’re a figment of my imagination and I’m stuck in an… endless loop. I dunno.”

“I… don’t think that’s the problem,” Cougar says haltingly. “This is real. That was real.”

“Then how do we stop it?” Jensen nearly yells. 

“Sleep?” Cougar asks with a shrug. 

“Like resetting in a video game?” 

Clay and Roque climb onto the bed carrying Pooch’s lifeless body. Clay meets his eyes grimly but doesn’t say anything. Jensen wonders just how long he’s been gripping Cougar’s biceps like a vise. He’s suddenly reminded of that overheard conversation from a few weeks back, Roque saying how weird he and Cougar could be together. He sees the same sentiment in Clay’s countenance, but there’s a touch of longing there, too. Clay needs his own Cougar, and he’s not going to find it in Roque.

Nor in Pooch, now. 

“Four guys out there,” Roque says with a twisted smile as he moves back to the passenger’s seat. “Killed four motherfuckers on his own before they got him.” He sounds proud.

Jensen is, too. 

  
  


***

The rest of the day is a bit like the dentist’s office used to be for Jake, but instead of extra novocaine in his mouth, it’s been injected into his veins. He can’t feel a thing, not body and not mind. He’s moving on autopilot at this point. Is this how Cougar feels behind the scope of a rifle? Jake can see the appeal.

Debriefing seems to take forever since they all have to chat with the brass after such a catastrophe, not to mention Jensen’s brief spike of stress over the real reason he’d called the others back to the rendezvous. Cougar reassures him that they have no way of knowing the truth; it’s not like there’s CCTV keeping an eye on their every move. 

He lies on the motel bed later, unable to sleep. Jensen’s thinking he’s counted maybe six hundred plus sheep at this point, and is scared that he might not be able to try the reset mode idea. It won’t work - he knows that deep in his gut - but he’s got to try. 

He’s surprised when the edge of the bed dips and Cougar settles next to him. It’s a double queen room and there’s plenty of space, but Cougar snuggles close enough that Jensen can faintly feel breath against his neck. 

Wordless permission given, Jake maneuvers himself closer, close enough to feel the hot lines of Cougar’s body against his back. His own body moves with Cougar’s breaths, again like they’re one single person. It’s easy by now to sync his heart and breath with his best friend’s, and this is how he finds enough peace to fall into unconsciousness, hope a faint beacon in his mind. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: Description of a bad car accident and temporary main character death at the beginning of the chapter.
> 
> The End! 
> 
> I'm sorry it took so damn long. I was honestly being lazy in editing, which is entirely my fault because editing is H A R D and there are a lot of metaphors in this thing that could get the reader a bit mixed up. I'll leave the interpretation up to you. 
> 
> HUGE thanks to my beta, ASheepsLife. You gave me exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for! <3
> 
> Commens and kudos always appreciated. Love you guys.

  
  
  


  
  
  
  


Jensen doesn’t really believe in much, not on faith alone. He likes hard evidence, something tangible, something _real_. 

It hadn’t always been that way, though. He was a precocious child, bored in school and miles ahead of his peers. His imagination had always been something he could fall back on to escape the mundane, and he had done so often enough that his parents had been worried about him. 

But then they’d both died in a car accident bad enough that it had left them unrecognizable; when fifteen-year-old Jensen’s ears had stopped ringing and his mind had stopped doing flips, he’d unbuckled his seatbelt and crawled up to them, cramped in their old car, had tried to wake them up without realizing, without _looking_ at what they’d become. When they hadn’t responded and he did look, the memory had burned itself into his mind, a scar everlasting like any other, and no matter how many astronauts, explorers, or knights-errant he’d tried to be, nothing could heal it. 

So he’d stopped dreaming and had started living in the real world, strengthening his connection to physical reality and to knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge. He’d devoured every bit of it he could get his hands on and had finally landed on computer science as his preferred obsession, though he still knows random shit on top of random shit and loves to parade it in front of his friends, especially at inopportune moments.

One of those scientific concepts he had never quite grasped was the butterfly effect. He’d always gotten the multiverse idea, though, and he just figured it was like skipping universes like a stone on the water, touching down every so often on its way to oblivion. Only in the stories would the water travel into an abyss, something nobody but maybe Gandalf would be able to climb out of in one piece. The reality of it would be more random, more of an unpredictable shitstorm than a parade of increasingly painful and dangerous experiences.

Yet here he is standing over the corpse of his best friend, glassy brown eyes lacking whatever it was that had made him Cougar. And he’s lost all of them by now - Pooch, Roque, Clay - but never Cougs, never his partner in crime, and as much as he hates to say it, it isn’t the same as the others. It’s not like losing a good friend, not even like losing a partner in crime and more like losing a goddamn limb. Worse than; Jensen would know. There’d been so much life in Cougar, joy and anger and sorrow brimming over - Jensen had always been surprised no one else could read him, because he could’ve seen it blind, how much Cougar could feel. He’d never been able to contain it, not in front of Jake, no matter how hard he’d tried at the beginning. 

And now he’s gone. Jake isn’t sure he can bring him back, either, not on his own, and he’s goddamn _terrified._

“What do we do?” he hears Pooch ask in the background, a mutter he can barely understand. Or maybe the ringing in his ears is turning a shout into a hoarse whisper.

“We take him home,” Clay responds as though he’s talking to a five-year-old.

“But Jay?”

“He’s right,” Roque says. “They’re weird, Clay. _What do we do with Jensen_ is the question.”

_Deja vu_ strikes him hard enough he thinks he’ll fall to his knees. Now he understands what Roque really means - has it always been that obvious? Has everyone else seen it for what it is except for him? Or is it that he never _let_ himself look it full in the face?

_The latter_ , he thinks bitterly. _Definitely the latter_ . Cougar is more than just a partner in crime. _Guess you really don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone._

Well, it’s too late now, or at least it _might_ be too late. He hopes it isn’t, but this hasn’t happened before. Is it Jake who had changed things on his own? Does the process need the both of them? He remembers asking Cougar what kinds of experiences he’d had meditating, and he remembers being blown off, too. It’s possible that Cougar had been hiding something; but if he had, what could it have possibly been?

No matter - he’s obviously gotta keep trying. No way he’ll take Cougar’s death lying down, that’s for fucking sure.

And it pains him to say it the next morning, how palpable his relief is when he opens his eyes to that same jungle, that same cloying heat while Cougar stands next to him, whole and perfect and everything Jake’s ever wanted. Why has he not just admitted it to himself? Maybe he really is as stubborn as Jess says he is.

It’s a fucking miracle. Cougar’s back. They’ll fix this thing or die trying.

  
  


***

  
  
  


_This is it_ , Jensen thinks. _Looks like it might be ‘die trying.’_

He turns to Cougar, who Jake knows, from experience, looks a lot better than he actually is. To someone else, he might seem impassive or uninterested in the proceedings; in truth, he’s in a fuck ton of pain. Jensen can tell because of the tightness around his eyes and the thin line of his mouth. Jensen himself isn’t much better - he’s pretty sure he has a concussion, a few of his ribs are broken, and he’s torn his calf muscle and isn’t sure he could run out of here if need be, not that it’s looking likely he’ll even get a chance. 

“Y’know, I was just thinking,” he comments, shaking the shackles on his wrists. “At least I still have legs.”

Considering that Cougar hadn’t been following the thought process in Jake’s head, this _apropos_ comment seems off-color enough that he’s surprised Cougar only glares at him. He’s either too tired or too hurt to cuff Jake upside the head. 

Jake’s too tired to _care._ “I know how that sounds, but seriously, look at the bright side here. We’re shackled in a cell with no windows or bars, just a fucking dusty room with a pallet on the floor and a bucket in the corner, and odds are good we’re not makin’ it out of here alive. I’m just saying. ‘Least I’ll die with my body intact.”

He doesn’t like the almost-pitying look Cougar gives him, or his silence. Especially the silence. Cougar has been going dark more often. It gets worse with every timestream clusterfuck they cause, or live through, or dream, or whatever-the-fuck is happening. He supposes it’s enough that Cougar still tries to fix it. Or at least he had kept trying until he’d died. No telling what will happen now.

“Cougs,” he murmurs. “Talk to me.”

This is by far the worst they’ve ever had it, even by this mission’s standards. Pooch had been hit on the head and taken away in an armoured truck, Clay and Roque had gone radio silent after a frightening grunt followed by a wet crunching sound on the comm. Jensen doesn’t think it likely that any of them are still alive, let alone coming for them. And the General surely has something in store for the two of them; why else would they be alive?

Cougar continues his silence, though he’s paying more attention to Jake now. That’s a good sign. It’s when Cougar gets lost in his own head that Jake has to worry. That sniper-space he gets into, where he doesn’t recognize the world around him except for whatever information directly relates to his survival, fucking _terrifies_ Jensen. 

He decides to save his energy. They’ve not had a visitor in what feels like ten hours, and he’s so thirsty he wants to throw up. SERE had trained him for this very possibility, and he’s following the guidelines just fine so far, but that doesn’t make it easy, or even very bearable. Cougar’s presence is unsurprisingly an extra lifeline to keep Jensen’s sanity intact. He only hopes Cougar feels the same way about him - even if it’s the silent, survival-focused Jensen that only (thankfully) makes an appearance once in a blue moon, because for some reason he can’t figure out, Cougar seems to like him running his mouth.

When the General himself opens the door, Jake braces himself. There are no guards with him, but he doesn’t appear to have either door or cuff keys, so even if the two of them could get the jump on him, they’d have nowhere to go after. 

Submit and hold out until there’s another option. That’s all they can do now. 

Jensen flinches when the General pulls out a pocket knife and pops the blade up. “So, Honduran General,” he starts, because the man had been staring at Cougar like he was getting ready to cut and Jensen doesn’t always make good decisions when Cougar’s life and well-being are on the line. “Can I call you that? You’ve got me at a disadvantage here. Pain’s bad enough I can barely remember my own name,” he confides. 

The General grimaces like he’s stepped in particularly runny dog shit, which is kind of unfair. Jake’s done a pretty good job today, all things considered. Maybe he doesn’t deserve a medal, but a pat on the head might be nice. 

“By the way, we’re kinda thirsty?” He can hear it in the rasp of his voice. The more he thinks about it, the worse it feels. “I mean we can’t help you if we can’t talk or are dying of thirst.”

He thinks that’s a fair assessment of their situation, but the General’s face just twists more. He stares at Jake like Jake is nothing more than a bug, one that he wants to squish with extreme prejudice.

“Look, I don’t know what you want here, but this is getting boring. Can I at least have, like, a Game Boy before you decide to torture us or whatever you want to do?”

Cougar finally growls, knowing full well that toying with your potential torturer is not at all what he’d learned in training. Knowing full well that Jensen is calling attention to himself to turn it away from Cougar. 

Here’s the other thing: Jake’s fucking tired. He just wants it _fixed_. Or, barring that, finished. 

He turns his gaze to Cougar. “Oh, come off it, my friend. If we’re going to die here, we might as well do it in style. Right, General?”

“I can’t believe the US Army trained you like this,” he says incredulously in heavily accented English. Then he bends down and places the pocket knife against Jake’s throat. And while Jake knows that it’s not a pleasant weapon for that particular execution method, the only outward sign of fear he gives is a single dry swallow. 

The guy’s got his fingers in Jake’s hair and is pulling it back painfully, exposing more of his throat. Jensen can only hope he goes right for the artery. He keeps talking, though, the General’s inattention on Cougar no longer a factor. 

“It’s just that when I get nervous, I talk a lot,” Jake continues. “As in, my mouth just vomits noise. All kinds of noise. Might even start moaning here in a second if you keep - ahh - digging your fingers into my scalp like that. I can’t help it.”

“Shut up,” the General growls, pressing the tip into Jake’s skin. A single drop of blood makes its way down his neck to his undershirt. He’d always told the guys that white undershirts were a bad idea in the field - turns out he’d been right, because if they somehow manage to escape and find their way into town, they’ll stick out like sore thumbs. He will at least, the white guy with blond hair and obvious bloodstains. And if he doesn’t make it out of here alive, the result will be ugly. Real fuckin’ ugly. “I don’t know what I will do with you yet. Which one of you is first on the chopping block. Rest assured I will get what I need out of you.”

“So what, you just wanted to get a good look at us? Check out the goods? You know it’s a _you break it you bought it_ policy, right?” _They sure as shit wouldn’t be taking us back if we gave you any information, asshole._

The General makes a low, mean noise and slaps him hard enough to slam his head into the wall behind him. He blacks out and when he comes to, the man is nowhere to be found.

Cougar, though. Cougar is at his side and probably had jumped to it the minute his torturer had left the cell. 

“Cougs,” he mumbles, wondering if he sounds anything like normal and deciding he doesn’t care. “What if they have cameras here? We can’t act… we can’t act like we’re together. _In_ it together. Like we are, you know? Jesus, this hurts. Like we _are_ , Cougs. They’ll use it against us.”

“Keep talking,” Cougar says quietly. “You need to stay awake.”

“Oh, I know how this goes,” Jake says. “Not my first rodeo, remember? Worst rodeo, though. I don’t think we’re makin’ it out of this one.” Cougar feels his forehead but doesn’t meet his eyes. “You remind me of my mother right now,” he continues. “Not quite as pretty, though. Well.” He closes his eyes, feels the world tilt on its axis and quickly opens them again. “Maybe a bit.”

The frown on Cougar’s face makes him sad, a little, but he tries to stay chipper. Why not, if they don’t have much time left? 

He doesn’t realize he’s been fading in and out of consciousness until Cougar slaps his face _hard_. “Jesus fuck, couldn’t you pick the other cheek? Everybody gangin’ up on righty today,” he complains. 

“Stay awake,” Cougar says fiercely.

“Can’t. ‘S hard.”

“Jake - “

“This might be lights out for me, Cougs. Sorry.”

He is, too, genuinely fucking sorry that things will likely end this way. There’s no way he can meditate now, not with his head spinning like this.

He drifts for a while.The world’s still spinning on its axis, but Jake finally manages to keep himself awake for a decent period of time, and real awareness starts to come back to him. It’s probably the sense of melancholy that comes with it that forces his guard down then, but the truth is that it’s been a long time coming. For both of them.

“One day I’m going to ask you to marry me,” he murmurs. He can see Cougar’s head whip around in shock from the corner of his eye, but Jake keeps his gaze on the off-white wall straight ahead. “I wonder if you’ll say yes.” 

And something deep inside Jensen, something soft and fragile finally opens and slides into place. _Funny how these things happen too little, too late._

“Jake,” Cougar says softly, once more moving to sit next to him. He reaches out for Jensen’s hand and squeezes it. Must mean he thinks Jake has officially lost it - _here comes the pity party_ \- but Jake somehow feels better than he has in a long time. Since well before this mess, certainly. 

“I mean it,” he insists, forcing his body into a sitting position despite Cougar’s feeble attempts to keep him still. “This is important. No, don’t swat my hand - get off, I _mean_ it.” 

Cougar’s next to him, so close, so fucking close. All it would take to kiss him would be another few inches of movement, and surely Jake has that much left in him? He’s gotten most of the way there in every sense that matters. 

Cougar makes the decision for him, leans in and seals their lips together like it’s a done deal. Jake is shocked for half a second, but then body odor and putrid breath and porcupines residing in his throat aren’t even remotely problematic anymore, because he surges up to return the kiss and it’s _perfect_. Their lives are over, of that he has no doubt, but this here? What a way to go.

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” Jake says with a smile as Cougar settles Jake with his head against Cougar’s chest, hips trapped between the V of his thighs, Cougar petting his hair as best and as comfortably as he can with the shackles holding him back. 

“I hope we’re finally waking up,” Cougar murmurs, and Jake grins delightedly. 

“Is that a yes?”

“Let’s talk it through later. You’re concussed.”

“Also true, my friend,” Jake says, reveling in the warmth of his best friend against his back. “That doesn’t mean shit right now.”

Something in his voice must convince Cougar, because the sigh he gives is not the usual long-suffering one Jake’s used to; it’s a sigh of peace, maybe of relief, assuming Jensen’s not being fanciful. He is a self-proclaimed hopeless romantic, though, and he’s probably going to die bloody today, so he figures he’s earned it.

Cougar holds him for a while in silence, and Jake would love to stay there for the rest of his life, however long that ends up being, but nature eventually calls. Cougar, so helpful, brings the bucket and leans him against the wall so he can use it without making a mess. 

Jake’s feeling out of breath when he manages to get back to a sitting position. “Let’s hope we don’t have to use that soon,” Cougar says, pushing the bucket away. Jake would wish he has no idea what Cougar’s talking about, but that ship had sailed long ago. 

“Bear Grylls will be proud of us,” he responds, swallowing harshly. “Lemme back the way I was.”

The best feeling in the world is Cougar’s arms draped over his shoulders, the hot puffs of breath against his scalp. Jensen had always thought it would be, but hadn’t let himself imagine it, had always kept the idea at arms’ length, lest he drive himself mad. Now that he’s not just thinking about it, but experiencing it, he’s wondering why it’s taken so damn long. 

_I’m a fucking stubborn asshole, that’s why._

Muffled yells and thumps sound from the hall. Cougar tenses underneath him, but doesn’t move. Jensen, falling asleep once again despite himself, murmurs, “You sure you don’t wanna get up? Thought you were gonna fight for us,” he jokes.

“Mm-hmm,” Cougar grunts, almost _mean_ with it. Jensen can hear _I’m not letting you go until I have to_ under the words, and it makes him smile. “Don’t sleep, Jake,” Cougar continues softly. 

“Sorry, Cougs,” he whispers. “I’ll come back, though, I promise.”

  
  
  


***

  
  
  


Later, Jensen will say a prayer or five to his favorite spaghetti monster that things play out the way they do. He doesn’t remember much of it, just bits and pieces. Roque, who’d never sounded happier to see Jensen. Clay giving the order to fuck some sons o’ bitches up, displaying his brass balls for the umpteenth time. Guy must not have a fear response at all. Cougar holding onto him for all he’s worth, careful not to jostle him in their haste to get free. 

His whispered _stay with me, Jake, please,_ every time Jensen would slip away during extraction. The way his voice shook with a fear Jake had never heard before, something that not even certain death and likely torture could produce. 

Jake doesn’t swim back to full consciousness until they’re back in the States. He finds himself in the hospital, catheter and IV lines sticking out of him. _At least I’m not in traction_ , he thinks. _Or with a breathing or NG tube_. He deduces he hasn’t been out too long, a good sign.

He’s not surprised to see Cougar at his bedside. His best friend looks exhausted, the skin underneath his eyes thin and puffy. It takes a lot to get Cougar in that state, and Jake feels guilty for being the cause of it. 

“Hey,” he croaks, then bites his tongue in an effort to stop the noise of pain threatening to crawl out of his throat. Jesus _fuck,_ he’s thirsty. 

“Easy,” Cougar murmurs, scooting forward. “I’ll get the nurse, okay?”

_No, please don’t go away_ , Jensen wants to say, but he also doesn’t want to make another peep without a nice, long drink of water, so he remains silent. Watching Cougar go, though, hurts just as much, even though he knows Cougar will be right back. There’s a very deep, very rational fear that none of this is real, or that it will be taken from them. This just seems too… easy. 

Is that what Jensen has to look forward to? Questioning reality for the rest of his life? 

Questioning whether he _deserves_ any of this to be real? 

He lies back on the pillow, already tired. How long had he been out for? How many times has he awakened and not remembered what was happening, what he’s said and done?

Cougar returns, carrying a cup of ice chips and followed by a portly nurse with a no-nonsense face. Jensen looks at Cougar, a question in his eyes, and is grateful that Cougar understands him so well because he is _so_ not about to talk right now. 

“No water yet. Ice chips are okay.”

_You’re the best_ , he tries to say with his eyes. Cougar smirks - good, he got the message. 

Jake knows that there are things that need to be said between them. Cougar does, too; his spine is tight and he looks ready to fight or flee at the slightest provocation. And once again, Jensen wouldn’t be able to run after him. But of course they don’t get any quality time together for several hours, between the nurses and doctors and technicians and phlebotomists and fucking _Clay_ , who seems obsessed with keeping Jensen awake and alert. Jake knows it’s coming from the fear of losing him, but _Christ_ , Clay, really? What would he be like if he’d lived through what Jake and Cougar have?

Jensen does discover several interesting things about their escape, though, mainly that he’d grabbed Clay’s pistol and had shot the General right in the heart _while still in Cougar’s arms._ He doesn’t remember a bit of it, but they’d put the General’s gun in his pack and called it a trophy, and that’s good enough for him. They might be pulling his leg, except for the fact that he sees the awe in Cougar’s eyes and the grudging respect in Roque’s when they tell him about it. 

The other, way less cool thing Jensen learns is that Cougar had been scratched by the fender of a rusty old Ford F-150 during the extraction process.

He slaps Cougar’s knee when they tell him about it, the best he can do from his position on the hospital bed. “What the fuck, Cougar, do you want tetanus? Because that’s how you get tetanus.”

“They gave me a booster.”

“Sure, that makes it better,” Jake responds sarcastically. “What if we hadn’t gotten out of there in time? What then?”

“Jensen,” Clay warns from his seat on the couch. “The guy was carrying your heavy ass to safety.”

“I know, which is why I’m mad,” Jake says petulantly, irrationally. He turns back to Cougar. “Put the unconscious person down before trying to jump in the flatbed next time, will ya?”

“Stop feeling guilty,” Cougar murmurs, but there’s a small, secret smile on his face. 

The truth is, Jake _does_ feel guilty. But Cougar had done what he’d had to do to rescue him. They all would have, any damn one of them, but for some reason, this feels different. 

“We’re going to have time later, aren’t we?” he asks Cougar, murmuring so that the others don’t hear.

Cougar’s lips tighten, but he nods. “Me and you. We figure this out.”

“Sounds perfect,” Jake says, then lies back to sleep some more. A cat sleeping off his eighteen hours of naptime… or a soldier sleeping off months’ worth of nightmares.

  
  


***

  
  
  
  


It’s surreal to be back on base. It’s been... hours, days, weeks... a lifetime ago, maybe, the last time he’d seen this place. When he’d moved the last of his things and officially said goodbye to the military. That day had been surreal, too. 

He hadn’t had legs then, not made of flesh and blood and bone. 

He does now. 

And time doesn’t work that way, yet here he is, running on a treadmill while the same damn physical therapist watches his vitals and his stability so that they can clear him to go back into the field. And even though his lungs burn with the effort, he pushes himself, revels in the thud of combat boots hitting the tracks and the way he feels like he’s fucking flying on the power of his own body’s capabilities. It’s like finally coming home, finally knowing for sure that he’s beaten this thing, because he’s whole and Cougar’s whole and they’re whole _together_. 

In more ways than one.

They’d had a brief conversation about it, shortly after they’d brought him back to his bunk. It’d gone better than he’d expected, worse than he’d hoped, but... it’s a start. Jensen can finally see it on the horizon, what he’d never let himself dream of before - he and Cougar, a house of their own, a _bed_ of their own. Living for themselves. 

He finishes his fifth mile with a sprint, chuckling under his breath at the alarmed physio. Jensen can’t help it - this feels good. Life is good. He’s so damned lucky. 

“Well, you, uh... you beat your previous record by fifteen seconds, and you seem... “ She doesn’t appear to know what to say as he whips off his shirt and tosses it, balled-up, into the laundry chute. He’s dripping sweat and his nipples are hard, and it makes him grin against his better judgment, seeing her so flustered. 

_Still got it._

The physio clears her throat. “So yeah! I think you’ve passed with flying colors. The doctor will take a look at your information and sign you off, but you should be good to go within the next few days. Good luck out there.” 

Jensen watches her gamely walk away, head high, trying to maintain some dignity after losing her composure. He grins. 

He is _so_ telling Cougar about this. Cougs ain’t the only one that can get the ladies. 

Not that it matters. The ladies can’t have either of them, because Jensen’s got this one on lockdown and he’s never letting go.

Their dorm is quiet when he opens the door. Cougar had been listening to something in Spanish - Jensen’s really gonna need to learn more of it if he meets Cougar’s family - but now there’s not even a pin drop to be heard. 

“Cougs?” he calls, making his way to their bunk. “What are you up to now? I thought maybe we could order a ... “

The world tilts off its axis again when he opens the bedroom door to find Cougar on the floor, eyes glassy and skin burning up with fever, curled in on himself in the fetal position. He’s barely registering Jensen’s presence, only tracking him with obvious effort. 

_Oh no, no no no, why this? Why now? I did it all right, I did the thing, I won the guy. Groundhog’s Day is over._

He knows there’s devastation written all over his face and body language, but he scoops Cougar into his arms and does his best to stay calm. 

“It’s okay, pal. We’ll fix this. Get you to a hospital and fix it. Can you tell me what happened? You seemed fine before.” 

Jake listens to Cougar’s account of the story as he tells it between labored breaths, how he hadn’t felt great that morning, how it’d passed and then come back with a vengeance, the headache, the dizziness, the fever smacking him like a Mack truck.

They meet the others at the hospital. Clay, Roque, and Pooch don’t look as freaked out as Jensen feels, but he supposes they can’t be blamed for that. This is just an infection in their eyes, a serious one, maybe, but nothing that can’t be overcome. They haven’t lived through Cougar’s death, nor their own. The stakes are higher than they realize, and that’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? How can you seize the day without first realizing how fragile the day truly is? And by then it’s often too late. Hell, Jensen had had to live it a dozen times before he’d realized how dumb he’d been. And it might not even be finished. 

The others are watching him carefully, unsure of why this is so important to him, but they respect that it is. That’s something. Clay’s hand squeezing his bicep, Pooch staying right by his side as they wait for word of Cougar’s condition, which is coming entirely too slowly for Jensen’s comfort. 

After minutes, hours - time is fucking meaningless now - the doctors allow one of them to visit. Cougar’s stable for now, groggy but awake, connected to a monster of an IV. They tell him it’s not tetanus, just an infection, but Cougar will need to be kept in the hospital for observation as the drugs start to work. 

“Hey, Cougs,” he murmurs, taking Cougar’s hand. “Feelin’ any better?”

Cougar licks his lips. They’re so dry they look painful. “Not really,” he manages. 

“You’ll feel better soon,” Jake promises, though he knows there’s no way he can deliver on it. “They’ll get you stitched back together.” 

“Jake... If I - “

“No,” he says firmly, “you’re not. You’re _not_. Don’t even talk about it.”

“Jake, I - “

“No, Cougar.”

“Jake.”

He can feel Cougar’s eyes on him like a caress. But he’s not going to meet the sniper’s eyes, refuses to, because they’re not having this conversation. Cougar will be better in a few days and they’ll go their merry way down to the brass’ office to hand in their resignations. There’s only a year left on their contracts. It’ll be over before they know it. 

Cougar doesn’t say anything else, for which Jake is selfishly glad. 

He must’ve fallen asleep at some point, because suddenly he’s jerked awake by the aggressive warnings of Cougar’s heart monitor. Snapping to full alertness, he yells for the nurses, who are already on their way. He nearly digs in his heels and punches one of them when she gently takes his arm and pulls him away from the bed before realizing that they’re there to help Cougar, not to hurt him, and that if anyone can save him, they can. But Cougar’s heart has stopped beating and they’re getting out those damn paddles, and no, _no_ , this can’t be happening, not _again_ \- 

Clay and Pooch take him away, out to the waiting room while the doctors do their jobs. Jake isn’t hysterical; he’s dissociating, which is, in some ways, worse, but it’s the only way he can deal. He fades in and out for those few seconds-minutes-hours it takes for the doctors to finish trying to bring Cougar back from the brink of death.

Relief is a vague, distant thing when the doctors tell them that Cougar is once again stable. He hears the words, but they only register in some dim part of his mind. He feels untethered, uncomfortable in his own skin. It’s awful and he hates it. 

They let him back into Cougar’s room when Jensen insists that he’s family. The staff know better, but they let him go anyway, mostly because it’s clear he’ll need to be locked in the brig before he’ll let them keep him away from Cougar. It’s just not worth the fight. One of them, an older nurse with kind eyes, even hands him a single rose from the gift shop. He takes it and nods, choked up by the unexpected gesture. 

Cougar’s still unconscious, face unnaturally pale and skin weirdly cold. Jensen almost crawls into bed and wraps his arms around him, wanting nothing more than to keep him warm and alive, but even he isn’t stupid enough to push his luck that far. Instead, he pulls the chair close to his… whatever they are to each other now, and squeezes his hand once again. 

It takes a long time for him to speak. Cougar can’t hear him, but words are Jake’s forte, and sometimes it’s best to say it out loud even if the other person can’t hear you.

“I don’t know... what I’m doing,” he starts, stilted and awkward, unable to look Cougar in the face even though he’s not even conscious. The flower twists in his other hand, Jake’s nervous energy channeling itself through the motion. “It’s just... we started this, you know? And I don’t know... I don’t know, if it ends here, if you... if you die again, whether we should keep going or if I should let you go. I mean... we’ve finally gotten our heads out of our asses. I had you for a little while. That’s more than most people get in a lifetime, right?”

Cougar doesn’t answer, of course, but Jensen fancies he feels a twitch in his hand. Probably his imagination, but he takes it as permission to keep going. “What if this is really the end?” He raises his head. “I don’t know if I can keep going like this. Losing you like this. The others... sure, it’s tough, but you, I need you like air, man. You just don’t know.”

Jensen brings Cougar’s hand to his lips and kisses it. “I don’t know... Maybe you do. Maybe it’s the same for you. I’m seeing things differently now, you know? I denied my feelings for so long, I somehow managed to miss what was right in front of my face.” 

Cougar’s heart monitor starts going crazy again. It starts pumping so fast Jensen’s not sure how it doesn’t explode out of his chest. A part of him can hear the nurses in the hall rushing to respond, but his eyes and his thoughts and his very soul are centered on Cougar. And he’s not leaving this time; they can do what they need to do while he’s right there. If Cougar passes, he’ll do so with Jake’s skin against his. 

“Cougs, you beautiful disaster,” he mutters, “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me here alone. I can’t do this again - I _can’t_. God help me.”

_You don’t believe in God_ , Cougar would’ve pointed out. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Jensen responds to the Cougar in his head with a tear-choked chuckle. “It’s blasphemous or whatever. Just don’t go. Baby, _please_ don’t go. _I love you_.” 

The monitor stops beeping. At first, Jake thinks they’ve unplugged it, that they’ve already given up on the love of his life, and that’s it. 

But after what feels like forever, it comes to life again, struggling and slow but still there. Jake stares at the hand still held in his own, at Cougar’s peaceful, sleeping face, and up at the nurses. They look down at him with faces that range from weirded out to awestruck, which he can’t for the life of him understand. Strangely, they leave him be, even as they work around him, doing heavens-know-what to keep Cougar alive. 

It doesn’t strike him until later. Three little words. The rose on the floor, utterly and unknowingly destroyed. 

Jensen hasn’t moved, hasn’t dared to lest he break the spell. It’s quiet except for the steady beep of the monitor and the soft swishing sounds of gurney wheels pushed in the halls. He leans down to pick up the rose, the soft scent strong as it wafts from its crushed petals.

Cougar’s the beast. He’s _Belle._ That’s why they were looking at him weird. 

He laughs until tears roll down his face, trying not to jostle his best friend in his hysteria. Jake Jensen as Belle, that’s great. Cougar as the wild creature who had captured her body and then later her heart. The one who had softened little by little as he’d fallen for her, too. Well, that last bit - that’s exactly what’s been happening for years, if only they’d been smart enough to see it.

The laughter turns to sobs, big, wracking things that tear Jake apart from the inside out. He cries until he’s exhausted and probably dehydrated, until the last single, hot tear makes its way down his face and onto their joined hands. He kisses Cougar’s again, presses his lips into their skin and stays like that for a while longer. There’s nothing else to say anyway.

  
  


***

  
  


Cougar remains in the hospital for a whole week. He gets better in fits and starts, taking two steps forward and one step back. The doctors aren’t sure why the infection had snuck up on him the way it had, though everyone’s body is different, as they’d told him. Jake secretly thinks it’s because he’s been trapped in some kind of weird sci-fi-romance novel, but he keeps that to himself. 

He keeps it all to himself. There’s no way he’s sharing any of this with anyone, ever, except of course Cougar. Who would believe him? 

Cougar comes home on a Monday evening, weak and grumpy but unmistakably alive. He grumbles whenever Jake refuses to let him do anything on his own, and finally snaps when Jake follows him into the bathroom one too many times. 

Nothing can bring down Jake’s mood, though. He just salutes and closes the door with a grin, and revels in the small smile he catches on his best friend’s face. 

“I love you,” he tells Cougar that night in bed, grabbing him and pulling him close. Cougar doesn’t even complain as he’s manhandled against Jake’s chest. “I’m not even shy about it. I love you. I’m not wasting another chance to say it.”

“I know you do,” Cougar murmurs against his skin. 

“... Did you really just _Star Wars_ me? I’m offended!” Jake says.

“I was trying to tell you before. You shut me up,” Cougar offers by way of explanation.

“You love me. Say it.” Jake can’t see Cougar, but he knows he’s rolling his eyes. “Say it,” he needles. “You idiot. You love me. I don’t know why, but you do.”

“I do,” Cougar mumbles. “I love you. Happy now?” 

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” 

“You think we beat this thing?” Cougar asks after a few moments. “I’m scared.”

“Well, I sure as hell ain’t masturbating with you again.”

Cougar laughs, a quiet, beautiful sound. “I think that’s not what you meant to say.”

“Oh my god what did I just say?”

“Go to sleep, Jake.”

“Yeah... I’m going. And Cougar? We beat this thing,” he finishes. Jake did it right, he got the guy, he said the words. 

It’s over. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
